I went to see FOB and all I had was this AMAZING time
So yesterday Jac, calathea and I all went to see Fall Out Boy in Edinburgh.
Edinburgh is about a 5 hour drive from Leeds and we were hiring a car for me and calathea to drive. We picked the car up just before 10am yesterday morning, grabbed Jac and were on the road by 10:30am. We are nothing if well-planned fangirls.
We had originally planned to park outside Edinburgh at a Park and Ride site, but it turned out that the venue (the Corn Exchange) was further outside of the city centre than we'd anticipated. However! calathea found out that there was apparently over 300 free parking spaces on site. Rock!
We pulled up at around 3-4pm (we'd stopped a few times on the way as we had pleeeenty of time to get there) and pulled straight into a great parking space. Excellent! However, Jac pointed out a group of girls standing nearby...kind of in a line...as close as they could get to...fuck. The tour buses. We were parked about 40 metres from these two huge-ass buses and this may or may not have been the moment that my head exploded. No - seriously. Worlds colliding! My head was finding it very hard to come to terms with the fact that these boys who I have freaking written about, were right there. And while I couldn't see them, they could see me if they looked out their window. Not that they'd care who I was, but as calathea put it, I felt like I had a huge "SLASHER!" sign in neon over my head.
(However, if we could have stolen Harry's invisibility cloak? We'd totally have been stood around waiting to catch sight of them too. We're shy voyeurs!)
Needless to say we made a quick get-away towards the nearby Asda where I could change and we could buy Scottish-foods that my mum was missing and therefore demanded we buy. (However not before we'd heard some of the people waiting by the buses squeal for Charlie and mocked a girl who screamed "It's Gerard!!!!!!" - Uh huh - yeah, he popped over from Proj Rev to hang out with Charlie. *eyeroll*)
It was fun in Asda playing "Spot the FOB-attendees." My favourite was a guy, about 20 and straight-looking, wearing a "I want to have Pete's babies" t-shirt. Oh Pete - you lucky boy.
Finally about 6pm we decided to go and queue. So we're walking back down to the venue and notice a group of three guys walking towards us and one looked kind of familiar...and yeah. It was Dirty! Walking up to the very Asda that we had just left. Maybe he needed to buy some bread for Pete to beat him with? WHO KNOWS! The three of us had been non-stop chatting the whole time and it was one of the only moments that we were quiet, with each of us trying to be all nonchalant but still stare a little. (Also, Dirty's way shorter than I thought he would be. But then we always see him next to the-band-of-whom-I-am-taller-than-all-of, so...)
So! Queuing! We think we picked just the greatest time to start queuing. None of us were fussed about being on the barrier or anything (in fact I probably would have blown a blood vessel - turns out I have RPS lines! Who knew! I don't want to be in any way visible to the boys that I'm RPSing, even if they'll never know.) and it was the perfect balance between far-down-the-line and nowhere-near-the-back.
In front of us were these TEENY little Scottish emo-girls. Seriously (SERIOUSLY! :P) they were 5'0 and 5'3 and looked at calathea with awe. "Are you American?" calathea: "No - I'm Canadian" Girl: "Ooooh. I love Canadia." (I can't mock too much as I've called it "Canadia" way too many times.) calathea also had to explain to them that she hadn't flown over from Canada, you know, specially or anything.
There was also a sighting of Travis as we passed the gates on the other side of the tour buses (with me again going "BAH!" and fleeing out of sight as quickly as possible. I...I have issues... I could go into huge tales of how I'd love to meet them, but not as an obvious fangirl but I'm just too fucking knackered and it'd be boring. More boring.)
We chatted to them (the emo-girls) pretty much until we got inside. And there was the great moment where they asked us to buy them alcohol and the three of us turned into some kind of public service announcement about how That Would Be Wrong for us to do and how People Who Would Do It Are Sketchy. See? Not only do we travel the country to see bands, we also un-corrupt the young. A full service fangirling!
The tiny emo-girls did, however, tell us that they'd heard that Cobra Starship were no longer playing. What? WHAT?!? No Gabe? We hoped that their emo-hair had meant they mis-heard. No Cobra? Travesty!
Finally, however, we were in (after some freaking hefty security. Clearly they heard me in the queue planning to kidnap Gabe and Patrick for my basement. Bah. Must plan in secret in future.) and it was just as the first band started. Yay! We made our way in, expecting to be reasonably far back, only to find that it was a tiny little venue. It was big enough, but kind of like the size of the mid-popular, club-playing band venues rather than anything like the type of place a multi-platinum band could fill. We easily found a spot on the middle-to-JoeTroh side of the stage about 20ft away from the barrier.
However, the band on the stage were definitely not Cobra. No Cobra! Denied! I was very literally heartbroken. Not only had I been unable to see them at Decaydance Fest (as well as missing everyone else) I was now denied them in Edinburgh. Much Woe.
Instead we had this random other band who it turns out were Elliot Minor. They were perfectly good (although did not enunciate when singing enough for people who did not know their music) and I'm sure I would have liked them far better if they hadn't been tainted by OMG-You're-Not-Cobra and OMG-my-feets-are-killing-me.
They finally finished (one using a violin, no less) and we wondered if we'd get another band (maybe GCH due to the Travis-sighting), but then the crew brought out this teeny-weeny little mic stand and I was all "That's Patrick-sized!" (Seriously - it was a foot shorter than the crew-guy. Oh Patrick - I heart your pocket-sized self. <3)
It quickly became clear that it was FOB to come on soon and there was chanting and shuffling and already bajillions of passing-out peoples being dragged over the barrier. We kept expecting there to be a sudden influx of fans who barged us further back, or for there to be a sudden surge from behind that would propel us into the pit....but it just never happened. We were close enough to be CLOSE, without being all squished and stuff. Small venues FTW!
Finally, having made us wait for 45 freaking minutes, the lights dropped and BOOM! Boys! It was MANIC. And AMAZING! AND BOYS!!! They launched straight into "Thriller" and that was it. We were in full singing and dancing and bouncing and waving mode. I could tell you each individual song that they played, but it wouldn't describe how amazing it was. I had hold of Jac's belt so I wouldn't lose her, but that mainly wasn't a problem. God - it was AMAZING. And the band were right there.
Something calathea said which is so true, is that once it's in swing? You don't give a shit. You can shout as loud as you want or sing and wave and clap and it just makes it all the more fun. Also? I couldn't take my eyes off Patrick. He's like this amazing, hot ROCKING music-god on stage. When he struts across the stage with his guitar? Or rocks out? God - I'm feeling slightly weak-kneed just thinking about it. *fans self*. I barely looked at Andy (though he was kicking ass drummer-style) and really only noticed Joe when he would come to the front to get us all clapping and stuff. Winner of the night = Patrick.
Pete was cool but he did seem quite tired. And I'm not surprised! He rocked out quite a lot though and considering it was a pretty fucking small stage, he and Joe were still manic and all over the place.
We slashers again got a shout out (YAY!) by Pete telling Patrick that they were "really brave to declare their love on stage like this." If that wasn't great enough? Patrick went "What?" and Pete had to repeat it, to which Patrick was all "Uh - yeah - um..." *Adjusts tin-hat to a jaunty angle*
So we're singing and dancing and cheering and everything and suddenly I didn't feel so great. It was so hot that I was melting and sweating all over, but so was everyone else. I just - I felt dizzy and needed water. It was unlike anything I'd ever felt before, actually, and I've been dehydrated before. I started almost lurching against Jac who looked at me with this uber-concerned face. I think the adrenaline was the only thing keeping me upright. Jac though, quickly pushed her way through the masses and brought me a pint of water. And literally as soon as I'd drunk even half of it, I felt fine again. Jac FTW!
Also - Patrick = amazing live. I've heard lots of recordings of them live, but nothing did him justice. Just the power and the range and the accuracy. Man alive. And yes - the guy is hot, but that wasn't what made me unable to look away. He was just - on fire. He's AMAZING. And fucking TALENTED.
Pete climbed up on the giant-ass speaker at one point - which is about two foot taller than him anyway - and jumped off, which was, I have to admit, pretty impressive because it really was just that high. He had some full-on Troh-mania of his own and at one point went down on his knees to play at Patrick's feet. I was fine with that and may possible have cheered like a freak with calathea. That's it boys! Write our canon for us!
I was also pretty impressed with his screaming. It's like my Spencer thing - I could never image that little, bitchy-lesbian-boy playing the drums until I actually SAW it, and I couldn't imagine Pete screaming hard-core style until oh look - there it was! Nifty!
It turned out that Travis was there to make the shortest-ever-stage-appearance wherein he rapped a little before one of the songs. It was great to see him, but yeah...underwhelming. If they'd even done Cupid's Chokehold or something to make up for my Cobra-less-ness?
We decided close to the end that we'd leave when "Saturday" got up and running so that we could get out ahead of the main traffic, considering we had a 5-ish hour drive back to Leeds. We all love Saturday, and we could still hear it all the way to the car (did I mention how small the venue was? And how close we were parked?)
So there we are - a 10-hour drive round trip, not getting back until 3:30am and having to be up at 9am to take the car back to the hire place. Too hot and not enough water and totally an utterly worth it.
This entry was brought to you by lack-of-sleep and cronic over-use of the word "seriously" by all of us.
Edinburgh is about a 5 hour drive from Leeds and we were hiring a car for me and calathea to drive. We picked the car up just before 10am yesterday morning, grabbed Jac and were on the road by 10:30am. We are nothing if well-planned fangirls.
We had originally planned to park outside Edinburgh at a Park and Ride site, but it turned out that the venue (the Corn Exchange) was further outside of the city centre than we'd anticipated. However! calathea found out that there was apparently over 300 free parking spaces on site. Rock!
We pulled up at around 3-4pm (we'd stopped a few times on the way as we had pleeeenty of time to get there) and pulled straight into a great parking space. Excellent! However, Jac pointed out a group of girls standing nearby...kind of in a line...as close as they could get to...fuck. The tour buses. We were parked about 40 metres from these two huge-ass buses and this may or may not have been the moment that my head exploded. No - seriously. Worlds colliding! My head was finding it very hard to come to terms with the fact that these boys who I have freaking written about, were right there. And while I couldn't see them, they could see me if they looked out their window. Not that they'd care who I was, but as calathea put it, I felt like I had a huge "SLASHER!" sign in neon over my head.
(However, if we could have stolen Harry's invisibility cloak? We'd totally have been stood around waiting to catch sight of them too. We're shy voyeurs!)
Needless to say we made a quick get-away towards the nearby Asda where I could change and we could buy Scottish-foods that my mum was missing and therefore demanded we buy. (However not before we'd heard some of the people waiting by the buses squeal for Charlie and mocked a girl who screamed "It's Gerard!!!!!!" - Uh huh - yeah, he popped over from Proj Rev to hang out with Charlie. *eyeroll*)
It was fun in Asda playing "Spot the FOB-attendees." My favourite was a guy, about 20 and straight-looking, wearing a "I want to have Pete's babies" t-shirt. Oh Pete - you lucky boy.
Finally about 6pm we decided to go and queue. So we're walking back down to the venue and notice a group of three guys walking towards us and one looked kind of familiar...and yeah. It was Dirty! Walking up to the very Asda that we had just left. Maybe he needed to buy some bread for Pete to beat him with? WHO KNOWS! The three of us had been non-stop chatting the whole time and it was one of the only moments that we were quiet, with each of us trying to be all nonchalant but still stare a little. (Also, Dirty's way shorter than I thought he would be. But then we always see him next to the-band-of-whom-I-am-taller-than-all-of, so...)
So! Queuing! We think we picked just the greatest time to start queuing. None of us were fussed about being on the barrier or anything (in fact I probably would have blown a blood vessel - turns out I have RPS lines! Who knew! I don't want to be in any way visible to the boys that I'm RPSing, even if they'll never know.) and it was the perfect balance between far-down-the-line and nowhere-near-the-back.
In front of us were these TEENY little Scottish emo-girls. Seriously (SERIOUSLY! :P) they were 5'0 and 5'3 and looked at calathea with awe. "Are you American?" calathea: "No - I'm Canadian" Girl: "Ooooh. I love Canadia." (I can't mock too much as I've called it "Canadia" way too many times.) calathea also had to explain to them that she hadn't flown over from Canada, you know, specially or anything.
There was also a sighting of Travis as we passed the gates on the other side of the tour buses (with me again going "BAH!" and fleeing out of sight as quickly as possible. I...I have issues... I could go into huge tales of how I'd love to meet them, but not as an obvious fangirl but I'm just too fucking knackered and it'd be boring. More boring.)
We chatted to them (the emo-girls) pretty much until we got inside. And there was the great moment where they asked us to buy them alcohol and the three of us turned into some kind of public service announcement about how That Would Be Wrong for us to do and how People Who Would Do It Are Sketchy. See? Not only do we travel the country to see bands, we also un-corrupt the young. A full service fangirling!
The tiny emo-girls did, however, tell us that they'd heard that Cobra Starship were no longer playing. What? WHAT?!? No Gabe? We hoped that their emo-hair had meant they mis-heard. No Cobra? Travesty!
Finally, however, we were in (after some freaking hefty security. Clearly they heard me in the queue planning to kidnap Gabe and Patrick for my basement. Bah. Must plan in secret in future.) and it was just as the first band started. Yay! We made our way in, expecting to be reasonably far back, only to find that it was a tiny little venue. It was big enough, but kind of like the size of the mid-popular, club-playing band venues rather than anything like the type of place a multi-platinum band could fill. We easily found a spot on the middle-to-JoeTroh side of the stage about 20ft away from the barrier.
However, the band on the stage were definitely not Cobra. No Cobra! Denied! I was very literally heartbroken. Not only had I been unable to see them at Decaydance Fest (as well as missing everyone else) I was now denied them in Edinburgh. Much Woe.
Instead we had this random other band who it turns out were Elliot Minor. They were perfectly good (although did not enunciate when singing enough for people who did not know their music) and I'm sure I would have liked them far better if they hadn't been tainted by OMG-You're-Not-Cobra and OMG-my-feets-are-killing-me.
They finally finished (one using a violin, no less) and we wondered if we'd get another band (maybe GCH due to the Travis-sighting), but then the crew brought out this teeny-weeny little mic stand and I was all "That's Patrick-sized!" (Seriously - it was a foot shorter than the crew-guy. Oh Patrick - I heart your pocket-sized self. <3)
It quickly became clear that it was FOB to come on soon and there was chanting and shuffling and already bajillions of passing-out peoples being dragged over the barrier. We kept expecting there to be a sudden influx of fans who barged us further back, or for there to be a sudden surge from behind that would propel us into the pit....but it just never happened. We were close enough to be CLOSE, without being all squished and stuff. Small venues FTW!
Finally, having made us wait for 45 freaking minutes, the lights dropped and BOOM! Boys! It was MANIC. And AMAZING! AND BOYS!!! They launched straight into "Thriller" and that was it. We were in full singing and dancing and bouncing and waving mode. I could tell you each individual song that they played, but it wouldn't describe how amazing it was. I had hold of Jac's belt so I wouldn't lose her, but that mainly wasn't a problem. God - it was AMAZING. And the band were right there.
Something calathea said which is so true, is that once it's in swing? You don't give a shit. You can shout as loud as you want or sing and wave and clap and it just makes it all the more fun. Also? I couldn't take my eyes off Patrick. He's like this amazing, hot ROCKING music-god on stage. When he struts across the stage with his guitar? Or rocks out? God - I'm feeling slightly weak-kneed just thinking about it. *fans self*. I barely looked at Andy (though he was kicking ass drummer-style) and really only noticed Joe when he would come to the front to get us all clapping and stuff. Winner of the night = Patrick.
Pete was cool but he did seem quite tired. And I'm not surprised! He rocked out quite a lot though and considering it was a pretty fucking small stage, he and Joe were still manic and all over the place.
We slashers again got a shout out (YAY!) by Pete telling Patrick that they were "really brave to declare their love on stage like this." If that wasn't great enough? Patrick went "What?" and Pete had to repeat it, to which Patrick was all "Uh - yeah - um..." *Adjusts tin-hat to a jaunty angle*
So we're singing and dancing and cheering and everything and suddenly I didn't feel so great. It was so hot that I was melting and sweating all over, but so was everyone else. I just - I felt dizzy and needed water. It was unlike anything I'd ever felt before, actually, and I've been dehydrated before. I started almost lurching against Jac who looked at me with this uber-concerned face. I think the adrenaline was the only thing keeping me upright. Jac though, quickly pushed her way through the masses and brought me a pint of water. And literally as soon as I'd drunk even half of it, I felt fine again. Jac FTW!
Also - Patrick = amazing live. I've heard lots of recordings of them live, but nothing did him justice. Just the power and the range and the accuracy. Man alive. And yes - the guy is hot, but that wasn't what made me unable to look away. He was just - on fire. He's AMAZING. And fucking TALENTED.
Pete climbed up on the giant-ass speaker at one point - which is about two foot taller than him anyway - and jumped off, which was, I have to admit, pretty impressive because it really was just that high. He had some full-on Troh-mania of his own and at one point went down on his knees to play at Patrick's feet. I was fine with that and may possible have cheered like a freak with calathea. That's it boys! Write our canon for us!
I was also pretty impressed with his screaming. It's like my Spencer thing - I could never image that little, bitchy-lesbian-boy playing the drums until I actually SAW it, and I couldn't imagine Pete screaming hard-core style until oh look - there it was! Nifty!
It turned out that Travis was there to make the shortest-ever-stage-appearance wherein he rapped a little before one of the songs. It was great to see him, but yeah...underwhelming. If they'd even done Cupid's Chokehold or something to make up for my Cobra-less-ness?
We decided close to the end that we'd leave when "Saturday" got up and running so that we could get out ahead of the main traffic, considering we had a 5-ish hour drive back to Leeds. We all love Saturday, and we could still hear it all the way to the car (did I mention how small the venue was? And how close we were parked?)
So there we are - a 10-hour drive round trip, not getting back until 3:30am and having to be up at 9am to take the car back to the hire place. Too hot and not enough water and totally an utterly worth it.
This entry was brought to you by lack-of-sleep and cronic over-use of the word "seriously" by all of us.